The Campaign Legal Center and other groups urge Senate Leaders, in bipartisan agreement, to publicly endorse constructive changes to improve a Senate Ethics process that is often described as a black hole.

The Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21 and Public Citizen strongly urge the State Ethics Commission of the State of New Jersey to immediately launch an inquiry into whether Gov. Christie’s acceptance of certain gifts, estimated to be valued at tens of thousands of dollars, violated the gift acceptance prohibitions found in New Jersey’s ethics and conflict of interest laws governing the office of the governor.

The Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen wrote to the Chair and Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics urging them to expeditiously undertake a more aggressive effort to educate and train Senators and their staffs regarding the applicable rules for use of any Senate resources during a campaign.  We believe this action is warranted for a number of reasons.  First, an unusually high number of Senators are running for President, and therefore, the campaign season has started much earlier.  In addition, Senators and their staffs may not have had the experience of maintaining a congressional office while running for national office.

A bill to help Federal prosecutors and investigators combat public corruption by strengthening and clarifying the law.

A statement made by Campaign Legal Center's Meredith McGehee arguing that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is intentionally structured to be ineffective. In that sense, it is the most successful agency in Washington -- but to the detriment of the American people. 

Testimony of Campaign Legal Center & Democracy 21 submitted to the Committee on House Administration and Subcommittee on Elections.

This analysis finds that the work of the Office of Congressional Ethics has had a dramatic impact on the activity and accountability of the House Ethics Committee. As shown below, the number of disciplinary actions taken by the House Ethics Committee – though certainly not large in overall numbers – increased drastically in the six short years that OCE has been operating as compared to the full previous decade of the Committee’s history. From 1997 through 2005, the House Ethics Committee issued only five recorded disciplinary actions against Members or staff of the House. From 2006 through 2008, the three years highlighted by the Abramoff scandal that resulted in nearly two dozen convictions or guilty pleas by the Department of Justice,2 the House Ethics Committee again issued only five disciplinary actions. But the House Ethics Committee has issued 20 disciplinary actions between 2009 and 2014, largely done with the help of the investigations and transparency of OCE. [See Appendix A, “Congressional Ethics Enforcement: From Decade of Inaction to OCE Period of Accountability.”] 

Upon the vote of a majority of nonrecused active judges, it is ordered that this case be reheard en banc pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 35(a) and Circuit Rule 35-3. Judges McKeown and Murguia did not participate in the deliberations or vote in this case.